2 Comments

First, thanks for the thoughtful post – I apologize for not spotting it sooner (looks like my ego radar missed one).

At the end of the day, you are 100% correct – from a writer’s standpoint this has the potential to be a shitty deal; after all, how can you make a living by hoping you write stuff that gets good pageviews?

(let’s ponder the irony)

I think it’s worth pointing out though that while L33tsauce is an interesting experiment from the publishing and the business side of things, this site is aimed less at serving professional writers than it is at rewarding gamers.

We’ve built a valuable toolset for gamers looking to share with one another, whether that means posting a list of your favorite WoW gear or writing up an in-depth walkthru, the primary point is to share the information freely and make it easy to access. Getting a little cash for it is a nice bonus, but definitely just a bonus.

That said, if you’re REALLY GOOD, and you draw a lot of traffic – the sky’s the limit. If we win, you win too.

This highlights an interesting implication that I didn’t point out in the post – that content is being increasingly “deprofessionalised”.

This means not that it is no good (everyone knows how rubbish I think a lot of career journalists are), but that web-based editorial and review-type content is being handed over to ordinary users to create. Often because it’s cheaper. Also, I suspect, because users actually quite like it.

Journalists hate this. They claim it is because the quality of content suffers. But actually it’s because they are terrified of having to earn a living doing something else when they are probably ill-equipped to do so.